Disclaimer: Same song and dance. I don't own CV:LoS and make no profit from this story. This fic references folklore and fairy tales.
The reason we are posting chs. 5 and 6 together is because ch. 6 only has 2,000 (or so) words of new content. Ch. 6 is the natural home of 'The Apple Wood', an except already posted in December 2015. The two versions are not entirely the same. It has been edited, and Beta wanted to see a little more info about Gabe's life. So, that detail's been added, and I smoothed out a verbal altercation between two of the characters. Some of the OCs may also set off different bells if you are a careful reader, but the revisions are still minor, IMHO. If you want to read it again in its natural context, thank you, you are lovely, and I adore you.
But if you don't want to read The Apple Wood again, I understand. Please use the Crtl+F feature on your browser to search these words: 'Gabriel echoed the closing notes'. This phrase will take you to the new content.
Warning: Contains casual human cruelty in a medieval setting, or casual writer cruelty in a medieval setting. Whateva you wanna call it.
Chapter 6—The Tale of the Apple Wood
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme
God showed Himself to the world in sunbursts, in falls of light streaking through clouds over the fields, the woods, the mountains; and one day, God showed Himself only to Gabriel.
Or so He seemed to, as the boy rested in a copse of trees overlooking the highlands. The Brotherhood of Light's compound lay further up the mountainside, while the village lay below, but the sunburst broke over all. In the stillness of the wilderness, the land had been made holy, silent, and golden, so peaceful and solitary, as if no people were left in the hills but him.
Gabriel dropped his pack of tinder-wood and stopped to rest awhile, to watch the sunburst as if it was only for him—since he was an orphan, a foundling under the Brotherhood's gates, and had no father left in the world but God. The Grace of God, in those rays of light, fanned through broken clouds as they swept across the sky. Fine arrows of sun slid from the Brotherhood's Wood to the apple wood below, where the fruit already began to swell and redden. It had been a good summer, and the fields glowed for it, flax fields over the dale turning pale as snow with their yield.
He wandered this whole wood, from the compound to this copse, but never had he wandered down to the apple wood. Supposedly, the trees of the orchard belonged to someone. Though it was hard for him to imagine the land really belonging to anyone, but he was still small. The world of adults had its mysteries yet—land, laws, ownership—and Gabriel owned almost nothing. His little book of prayers, his little bed, his little clothes, and his little job were all gifts of godly men's charity to the miserable ones. If he left the Brotherhood, he would leave these things for another boy behind him. He earned wages for his wood-picking, a half-copper a day, but Father Achim kept them, for when he was grown and had to find his own trade, if the Brotherhood didn't keep him for squire—
—He wanted badly to be squire, and he sulked a spell, remembering blood doting brightly on his tunic, from fights he'd been in with the other boys—again—
But Gabriel had finished his gathering for the day early and had two hours still before he needed to return, or else get hell and a beating from the grounds master for his lateness. So, Gabriel followed the Grace of God into the trees of the Apple Wood—
—and found a girl crying there.
She seemed a few years younger than him, perhaps seven, and she did not just sob. She threw a regal fit—stamping her dainty foot, red in the face, just crying in anger at the trees—and someone up in the branches who seemed to be laughing at her.
"You—you are so mean!" the girl wailed from the ground before she wiped her eyes again.
"I don't care, Marie!" said a boy's voice from up in the tree. "I'm not helping you climb up—"
"Then come down!" she shouted. "It's—it's not fair, Mathias! I wanna see the nest too—"
The boy in the tree was his age—and Lord if Gabriel knew how he got up there. He watched this boy through the leaves from the ground, this boy in his velvet doublet, his linen shirt, his good breeches, and his shiny boots. The both of them had very fine clothes, and the little girl was clearly grounded not for lack of climbing skill, but for the cumbersome skirts of the little orange gown and tiny white cape she wore. The children were especially caught in themselves and did not at all hear him coming.
"How come you won't help her up?" Gabriel interrupted. The little girl startled out of her crying while the boy swayed dangerously in the branches.
"Bloody hell!" the boy said with the awkward anger of someone still learning the first order of taking such oaths. "Where did you come from—"
"How come you won't help her up?"
"She'll fall, stupid," the boy said—to them both, really. "She's real clumsy—" This did not help her hurt feelings any, and she began to sniffle again.
"You're making her cry saying stuff like that," Gabriel told the boy in the tree. "She just wants to see too—" The richly-dressed boy rolled his eyes at them, said no more, and climbed some branches higher. Gabriel frowned and looked at the girl. It wasn't fair—who could climb in a dress like that? "Can—can you hang on?"
She stopped crying to gape at him.
"I'll—I'll carry you," he said, getting down on one knee. "You hang on—c'mon." She climbed up on his back and wrapped her arms around his neck without a word before he hiked her up easily—she weighing no more than a heavy pack of tinder anyway. Climbing would be a bit of something, but Gabriel was good at climbing. He hopped up the trunk to hang at the first branch, and she squeaked and grabbed him tighter, almost throttling him—
"We're—not—falling—" he managed through her squeezing, and she loosened her hold, gripping his sides with her knees instead. He climbed faster, carrying her higher, the skirt of the orange gown catching in the fingers of the littler branches—as the boy already in the tree watched them.
"You're both mad, and stupid," he said as Gabriel reached him. He settled the girl on the thick branch where the other boy waited. "How is she going to get down?"
"I'll carry her down," Gabriel told him. The little one, however, was smiling, even with the gold hem of her dress torn.
"Thank you," she said, playing with one of her dark braids while they rested. Her friend frowned.
"Well, it's up here," he said, climbing a little higher, and Gabriel followed, helping the girl after him.
"I am Mathias," the boy told him primly. "The runt is Marie," who looked quite upset when Mathias said this and she cried over Gabriel's shoulder: "So mean! I am not a runt—I'm not—"
"I have to play with her," Mathias told Gabriel in a low and very put-on voice. "It is my punishment for being born before her. Being eldest is such a chore."
"Mathias—" Marie cried.
"Let her see the nest now," Gabriel said, and Mathias scooted aside on the branch.
"Go ahead, girls first," he said and Marie leaned forward, her face brightening at the sight of three eggs, speckled and blue, in a tidy nest.
"They aren't hatched yet," she said to Mathias. "They really aren't hatched yet, Mathias! They're so pretty and blue—"
"I was going to bring one down for you, but with you carrying on like that—I couldn't leave you—"
"You shouldn't touch them at all," Gabriel said. "She won't come back to them." And Marie immediately put her hands behind her back and then began to forget the nest.
"What is your name?" she asked.
"You've seen it," Gabriel told her instead. "We should go down now—"
"But I asked your name," she said again, and still, Gabriel said nothing. Rich children probably shouldn't know his name—for his own sake—and so to was the afternoon passing. This idle time before he was due back to the compound burned quickly. If he dallied too long, the grounds master would learn him for his tardiness with bruises.
"Let's go," Gabriel told her as he helped her on his back again, her arms were more relaxed this time as he anchored them against the tree.
"Is your name Alfred?" she asked. He shot her a look over his shoulder.
"No—"
"Cornelius?"
"Why would my name be 'Cornelius'?" Gabriel said this with unnecessary disgust as he knew a Cornelius back at the compound—who was a prick. (Gabriel was a bit more learned in the practical craft of foul words than a boy of Mathias's blood.)
"You will not tell me your name—what else am I to do?"
Mathias had followed them down the opposite side of the trunk.
"Yes, what else are we to do?" Mathias agreed. "Where did you come from anyhow?"
"I have to go—" Gabriel said as he let Marie down. She sped from him and set her dress to rights over the roots of the apple tree, tucking the tattered hem out of sight.
"Did you come from the Brotherhood compound?" Mathias asked anyway.
"He said he wants to go, Mathias—let him be," Marie scolded. "Thank you for carrying me up and down the tree, Nameless one! I hope we meet again!" It became apparent at this moment that Marie was not seven, and Mathias had been blunt but correct in calling her undersized.
Mathias ignored her and marched between them.
"I am Lord Mathias Cronqvist—the Prince is my father. I command you, boy: tell me your name and if you are from the compound, or I will have you arrested."
"Mathias!" Marie cried, while Gabriel only scowled. Since he had been found, Gabriel owned almost nothing. Even his name was a token of charity, and this Mathias spoke to him, so rough, and wealthy, and self-important. Just as Cornelius did, just as all those other boys, the sons of knights with illustrious names to carry. Boys who were already squires, boys who did not have to pray where wishes failed. It didn't matter when they got into fights, or shoved lesser boys around—what punishment came heavy on the heads of sons of knights?
So, those words cut lines from him that might have otherwise held him back—
—and the orchard was empty but for them and the trees. Gabriel faced Mathias head-on, their foreheads nearly touching.
"Who is going to come and arrest me, princeling? Your father isn't here—"
Mathias pulled back. "How dare—"
"Nameless one!" Marie chided him too, coming between them. "No fighting! Mathias, stop it—we go—"
"But Marie, don't you want to see the Brotherhood compound? If he's from the compound, he could take us—"
"Oh, I do want to see that!" she said after a pause to consider it. "But he said 'no'—"
"She wants to see it too," Mathias said over her. "If you are from the compound, you should tell us so—"
"—Or you'll arrest me?"
"Well, only if you keep saying 'no'—if you just took us—"
"I'm not taking you to the compound—"
"So, you are from the compound," Mathias concluded. "Now, what is your name?"
"You two—don't need to know my name—"
"I suppose," Marie said, "but it feels ever so rude not to—"
"I'm leaving," Gabriel said, almost running from them to the edge of the orchard closest to the Brotherhood's Wood. "Go home." He re-shouldered his pack of tinder, headed out over the field, and found they followed him—and he could have no doubt at all it was them by their bickering. They led a black pony with them—the little prince's mount, its saddle hung with a long dagger in a jeweled scabbard. The pony bore the children and their bickering with the patience of a saintly mother.
The two bickered up the hills and down them again. At first, they bickered about who would ride the pony, and in what turn, before they ended up both walking alongside the little horse and bickering about following Gabriel. Before too long, they bickered about wanting to see the Brotherhood compound when their fathers had forbade it, and then, they bickered about what precisely their fathers would do to them when they found out they had gone to the compound anyway. They pointedly did not bicker about if they should have woken 'Milly' and told her where they were off to. But still, they were not done. The girl started the bickering as often as the boy did, and as each disagreement came near its end, they started anew. But if the boy ever disagreed too stiffly, the girl threatened tears.
When they found nothing more to bicker about their fathers or their fates, they bickered about if the trees overhead were oak or sycamore, if the flowers growing in the Wood's shade were goldenrod or yarrow, if the apples were still too sour or just ripe enough to eat—
—and about this time, they caught up to him—and they bickered still about apples because Mathias had nicked three from the orchard. To Marie, he gave the reddest of the lot, the greenest he kept for himself, and to Gabriel, he offered a warm, yellow apple and said:
"So, how far to the compound, Nameless?"
Gabriel did not take the apple: "I'm not taking you to the compound. Stop following me."
"That is a shame," Mathias said, giving the refused apple to Marie instead. "Because we are going to the compound—with you. Lead on!"
He trudged on; they followed. They followed and they bickered—about if Marie had torn her dress, or if the tree had, if a rustle in the brush was a rabbit or a fox—and Gabriel began to realize their bickering was a kind of game. They handed the unending argument off to one another, in turns nearly, until he could count their passes like beats in a tune. They seemed to be dear friends somehow in this. He had never imagined a friendship built so on bickering, but he hadn't much imagined friends. Children at the compound were few; many were older than him and already swept into the ranks of squires. They had their work, and so had he. When there wasn't wood to pick, Cook kept him in to pluck a goose or peel potatoes until his hands ached, his fingers full of nicks. Sometimes, he got to train with the recruited boys, but less and less so lately—after he broke Cornelius's nose—
"What do you do at the compound, Nameless?" Marie started, seeking to draw him into the circle of her, Mathias, and the pony. "Are you a squire?"
"I pick wood," Gabriel said sullenly, and Marie balked.
"Oh, well, that is very interesting—"
"That is not interesting—"
"Mathias!"
"Why are you not a squire?" Mathias demanded. "You are old enough—"
"I'm not," Gabriel said. "I'm just—not."
"I think it is because you are bad-tempered," Mathias told him, and Gabriel saw only red and the woods, not hearing Marie chiding Mathias again. He stopped in his trudging, turned on Mathias, and growled:
"I am not bad-tempered—"
"Oh, are you not!" Mathias laughed at him, as he had at Marie, and Gabriel put his back to him and marched. "So, how far to the compound—"
"Yes, how far?" Marie asked, a quake in her voice. "It is getting dark."
It was getting dark; the Wood around them spooked by shadows, suddenly strange.
"Nameless, are you lost?" Mathias asked.
"No, I'm not," Gabriel insisted, "you can see the lights of the compound there." He pointed through the trees at the lights through the leaves and the faintest lines of the red fort, and Marie sighed, relieved. Mathias climbed up on his pony.
"We are still out too far, we won't make it before dark," he said. "I will ride ahead for aid—"
"Mathias—" Marie attempted, but Mathias stood for none of it.
"Look after Marie, Nameless—I'll return soon!"
And he left them, the pony pacing well for such a sleepy animal.
"He is going the wrong way, your friend," Gabriel said to Marie when he was gone.
"Will he be all right?"
"Yeah, the road is still that way, but the compound is—" Gabriel stopped.
The lights had gone. Where the gold windows and lanterns of the Brotherhood's compound had glowed was only trees and trees, patches of paling sky flitting in the summer leaves.
"What's the matter?" she asked. He didn't speak, and the moment he looked back, the lights returned, hanging like will-o-wisps in the trees and coming closer.
"Nothing," Gabriel said, "let's walk—"
Marie grabbed his arm quite suddenly: "What's on the ground?"
Gabriel looked down with her, and serpentine lines appeared in the beaten path beneath their feet. Curling cracks slithered through the earth, meeting and drawing—'flowers?' and leaves and beasts in the dust, all over the path, until the markings wove themselves as thick and intricate as Persian carpets.
"It's beautiful," Marie said. "But what is it—"
Then, there came the sound of bells, and all too soon, it came again, a crisp, cold ringing—
"Get off the road," Gabriel said. He tossed his pack away and shoved her toward the brush. "It's the Host—Move—"
They crashed into the brush as floating motes of light, fey lights, began to drift among the branches, catching in whirls around sprigs, and still sang the bells—
"Move," Gabriel whispered desperately. "Be quiet—be so quiet—"
They crawled deep in the thicket until they came under an old tree, where the roots had hollowed a cave beneath it. Gabriel hurried her inside and slid in after her—the swift-falling evening full of fey lights, like fallen stars. They caught in his hair like troublesome dust, and he pawed them out.
And still sang the bells.
"What if Mathias comes back?" Marie whispered.
"He'll be fine, they can't find him," Gabriel told her. Mathias, with all luck, had probably found the road to the compound while the arrival of the Fairy Host had tripped them into the hidden country. Gabriel knew the Host; everyone knew the Host, even if only as a terror in poetry—they were 'people-snatchers,' from the other world. Their ghostly parade often passed through the Brotherhood's Wood in summer, but he was rarely out of doors at dusk. "We just—have to hide until morning. They'll go then."
Marie drew closer to him. "I'm frightened—"
"Don't talk," was all Gabriel said. The Host was perfectly frightful. He pulled her down until they huddled low in the root cave, the children clutching to each other as still sang the bells.
They sang in such even strokes as church bells while figures hooded and cloaked, the vanguard of the Host, walked the carved fairy path. They carried staves roped in silver bells that they struck on the packed earth with each stride taken, ringing every step of the Host—
Other music-makers walked among the Host, a harper and a strolling fiddler; somewhere, further off, a sharp fifer—
—until there came a squad of red horses ridden by veiled women in red gowns. They carried golden bows and quivers of silver arrows with garnet heads—
—and last in the Host, last behind them came a final woman, she too in red, she too veiled, but wearing a crown of red maple and oak leaves and a golden mask. She, the Lady of the Fairy, the Lady of the Host, rode in a chariot of twisted birchwood. Gabriel knew the fateful clatter of her wheels from cold tales, her chariot driven by a team of twelve foxes, as red in fur as her gown, their strange harnesses too strung with bells—
This lady pulled on her reins, the racket of her wheels stilling, as she called out to her host, her voice ghostly: "I hear the breathing of human children—on my road."
Gabriel gasped sharply, and Marie squeaked, and they both covered each other's mouths with their hands, to stop their noise, and huddled deeper in the root cave.
"Find them," the Lady of the Host commanded, and her maiden knights dismounted and broke into the woods. "All of you—search. Bring the little ones here." And at her word, all the ramblers in the Host left the fairy road to hunt. Her foxes even stalked among them, dipping their dark noses in the underbrush and snuffing without a sound.
Marie buried her face in Gabriel's collar, her hot tears on his neck. He hugged her closer, almost grateful for her hand over his mouth—keeping him still—
—as a fairy torch spilled into their grove, its light liquid on the dark roots, and the Host's fiddler walked over the roots of their tree, their hiding place. His shadow hung distorted over the mouth of their cave, the silent instrument slung over his shoulder making a monster of him—
And he began to sing, to sing and to play, as he walked, as he searched—his voice low, a soft and elven calling—his fiddle a phantom whistling—
"Don't listen," Gabriel whispered against Marie's ear. "Don't listen to it—" She had stopped crying, and they held onto each other. But even as he knew what would save them, the fiddler's voice came singing, warm in his ears—and he began to listen to the words—
"Come away, o human child," he sang, his fiddle crooning with him. "To her waters, and her wild. With the Lady, hand in hand, from this world more full of weepin' than you understand—" His voice blurred with others and together softly begged—"Come away, come away, o human child"—as if it were not only the fiddler singing to him gently, but all the ramblers walking in the trees—their voices in the shivering leaves, on the breath of breezes, in the white starlight adrift with fey lights, pale green and traveling, under the night.
And at the heart of their voices was the Lady of the Fairy Host. Her song tempted him with childhood that never ended, every day forever sweet and summer, young and painless, where nothing and no one would dare to strike him or make him cry, for no tears ever fell on the far, fair isle where he would finally have a mother, queenly and eternal—her warm embrace, her silken lap, her velvet hands—a mother who would love him as she loved nothing—
Marie hugged him so tight, Gabriel almost lost his breath, and she whispered to him, very small:
"Oh, please—please don't listen—"
The root cave seemed darker, duller than it had been, the fairy torch lying on its far wall like exotic gold.
"I—I wasn't," Gabriel lied—and shamefully, he knew she knew it. She did not let him go. Above them, the beguiling song stopped, and the fiddler rested his bow.
Both children held their breath—and waited—as they heard him kneel, the litter of the woods settling as he did—his torch sinking low to the ground. With as little sound as he could manage, Gabriel dragged Marie back from the light—
"What did you find?" came the chilling voice of the Lady of the Host in the grove. The fiddler rose from the mouth of the cave at her approach.
"Nothing," he said and played three notes from his piece, the shadow of his bow spiking against the wall of the root cave, and then three more—for six drops of sweetest song. The motes of light in the air jittered with the little tune. All the faint melody in the wood seemed suddenly harmless, its cruel charms laid low.
"Nothing?" she asked, unmoved by his music. "How find you no thing?"
"I found things, my lady," he told her drolly. "Dust—leaves—a crow carcass—but I found no one."
"But I heard you singing my song, and all the voices of the Host rose up with you—"
"I thought they might be hiding, so I sang out to them, but no one came."
"Search a last time," she commanded before she said with tenderness: "Then, you come back to me, my Thomas. I will have you play for me as we travel tonight."
"As my lady wishes," the fiddler said and pulled more notes—his music pinching sweetness into the still grove as he circled once—passing over the dark hole of the root cave—before he and his torch light slid away. All the ramblers returned to the road, their music straying back with them from the trees, as the bells began to sing, step by step, leading the Host away through the woods.
Gabriel collapsed on the floor of the root cave, gasping, until Marie let him go and he sat up. Even as the Host had moved on, their fairy lights remained, drifting over the cave mouth.
"Do—do we stay?" Marie asked, and he nodded.
"Till morning—when the fey lights go away."
"That is a long time," Marie said and took the yellow apple from a pocket in her skirts. "You should eat." He ate, and she sat quietly, watching the fey lights meet in spirals and turning circles under the tree. Cold crept in with the night, and they huddled together for warmth in the dark. Marie stretched her white cape over both of them, and the lull of sleep came with the velvet, soft and light as a cloud.
"You saved me, Nameless," Marie said drowsily. "Thank you." Their heads leaned together as the night thickened. "I won't tell Mathias your name if you tell me—I promise."
"I'm called Gabriel."
"I'm called Marie."
"I know that," he said, almost smiling—after all, Mathias had said "The runt is Marie," but he did not echo this—though she seemed to hear it again all the same. She wriggled under the cape.
"I have to play with him!" Marie said mockingly, putting her nose in the air. "It is my punishment for being born after him! Being youngest is such a chore! But he is my friend; he knows it!"
Gabriel chuckled, the smile coming through at last. "He is your friend—"
"You are my friend too! You saved me," she said at once before smiling very warmly with sleep coming over her eyes, her head heavier on his shoulder. "Good night, Gabriel."
"Good night, Marie," he told her. The moon came out over the grove, its beams full of the Wood's shadows, rustling. The fey lights caught in the moonlight winked out like stars. It grew quieter still, with only their small breathing. Gabriel ached to recall the fiddler's golden song, a hollow hurt fresh in his chest from its promises—of happiness, of mother, of a far, fair isle without tears—but he said anyway, even if she slept: "You saved me too."
— — —
Morning woke Gabriel—rudely—some hours later, when Sirs Phillip and Erich of the Brotherhood of Light fished the children from the root cave. Sir Phillip set him standing and clopped him on the shoulder.
"You are not Cornelius, eh, Gabriel?"
He was quiet, rubbing sleep from his eyes. The sky was still deeply blue, birds just waking.
"I'm not—"
"Nor Alfred," Marie said from up on Sir Erich's horse. She sat wrapped in Sir Erich's heavy cloak, looking very small in it.
"Well, young Lord Cronqvist said Voclain's granddaughter was in the woods in the care of a wood-picker who was not Cornelius."
"I think this quite fits his description," Sir Erich said, climbing up behind Marie, so she looked smaller still, and tired, beside the big man. There were fey lights still adrift, on the cusp of dawn, and they clung in Marie's curly, dark hair. "I'll be taking little Miss Voclain back now. I suspect she is sorely missed. A good morning to you, Phillip! Gabriel!"
"Aye, a good morning," Sir Phillip said. "Gabriel and I shall be true brothers and walk back!"
"Now, you boys aren't far," Sir Erich told them, his horse stepping as lingering fey lights fretted around her.
"Good bye, Gabriel," Marie called from the height of the great horse. "We'll meet again!"
"Good bye," he said. The markings left by the Fairy Host's passage still lay in the trail underneath him. Dawn would dust them away soon, and all would be as if the Hidden folk had never passed by. But as Sir Erich's horse nickered and set down the mountain to the village, Gabriel had the sense there were other hidden countries in the world than what came over the forest the past night. That the doors to those hidden countries opened only once in a man's life—before they shut forever.
And that Marie was going back to one such hidden country.
He hoped he would see her again despite, as Sir Phillip took them briskly up the mountain again.
"That was good sense, Gabriel," Sir Phillip said, his hand on his shoulder again, heavier this time. "Very good sense. You did very well."
"Thank you, sir."
Sir Phillip held Gabriel by the shoulder until he stopped on the path.
"Do you know what the little prince told us about you?"
"That he was going to have me arrested?"
Sir Phillip laughed. "He's the very kind, isn't he! But no, not that—he said you should be made squire for your 'services' to Miss Voclain." Gabriel kept very still as Sir Phillip spoke, as if to interrupt the knight was to interrupt a dream he was still having in the root cave. "Now, the word of a little prince is mighty, but I think it time, don't you?"
"Time—to be squire?"
"Aye, I do think it time. I think you've been left to Cook more for our sakes than for yours." Sir Phillip ruffled Gabriel's hair. "If you will have me, I will have you—for squire."
"Y-you would?"
"I would—but what say you?"
"Yes, Sir Phillip, yes!"
"Right! Let's get on then, and breakfast! Today," Sir Phillip said, with a touch of the fiendishness he reserved for new recruits, "will be a long day for you."
"I'm ready!" Gabriel promised, and they set on the path again with knights' pacing.
— — —
Gabriel echoed the closing notes of the tale of the Jinri and the Ship to Faiza and Jabir as he finished: "And after that, we became the dearest of friends, and once I find the Acre, she will become my wife, my family."
Jabir dozed against Faiza's knee and she roused him as she stood to put a hand on Gabriel's shoulder. The light of the cooking fire in its pan flickered across the deck. The night clouds had cleared, the dark sky full with the waning moon.
"That was a good story," Faiza told him, grinning as half her face seemed firelight. "We know what it's like to wander the world so alone. We will see you to the Acre, mister! We will see you to your family!"
Gabriel returned her smile. "Thank you, Faiza."
She left her hand lingering, her face serious.
"It won't be much longer now," she said. "We will see it tomorrow, by morning—there will be a storm. I will need your help."
"You have it," he told the captain of the dhow—without hesitation. Faiza asked Gabriel to sleep first and take the second watch, and he did, a gray dawn rolling on them the next morning. There seemed no sunrise but for a blotting of bloody clouds to the east.
"There will be a storm," Faiza said, watching the sun struggle in the gloom. The dhow drifted on the edge of the storm, and on the horizon, lightning struck the sea, coursing light through the waves. "Are you ready?"
Once Gabriel nodded, Faiza seemed satisfied, and he left her standing on deck for one last visit to the galley. Even as the morning sky churned sickly, below deck was still restful darkness—peaceful, sleeping. Jabir has supposedly already gone to sleep down there before Gabriel woke, but the galley was empty. When he set foot to plank, a boy's steps ran fast ahead of him, without a body, and something shapeless lingered in the far shadow. It didn't laugh. When Gabriel reached out to touch the hull again, he did not feel the light-heartedness he had before: the ship's heart was the same, but now, it beat determined.
And the spirit of the dhow whispered to him: Em-mee, I'm ready too!
Gabriel smiled and told the little dhow: "Then be brave. Protect your sister."
Yes! I will! replied the little voice at once, and that said, Gabriel climbed back on deck where Faiza braced herself at the bow. The golden sail overhead swelled, bright as dawn on the graying sky, and she pressed the dhow against the worsening sea.
All at once, the storm came—slapping the deck with rain. The dhow cut over the ocean all the faster, slicing through the wind. Faiza called Gabriel to the bow with a waving of her hand.
"There," she said over the rain. Her scarf clung to the wet darkness of her hair as she pointed to what remained of the shore in the storm. "Where it is darkest. That is the storm—that is where the Acre is."
"I see it," he told her. "I'm ready."
"Good—help me now. Lower the sail, and I will steer. It will take all my concentration. Tell me if—tell me if the ship is not safe." He nodded and brought the gold sail down as Faiza leaned hard to the starboard side of the bow and drove the dhow. Gabriel tied off the sail while the boat soared, skipping through waves crashing against its sides. Day faded with each breaker, lightning flashing over the deck pounded by rain—
His eyes stung and he clung to the mast as Faiza did not waver, even as heavier darkness fell and the wind ripped her amber scarf away. The long braid of her dark hair lashed in the storm, and she forced the dhow on. The sea broke over the ship, the hull shuddering, nearly sweeping Gabriel away—
—he caught himself against the stern wall, the rain striking his back like sheets of nails—and he looked down at the stern—
—the stern tattering in the water—the stitching holding its planks together shredding—sea water bleeding in the seams—
He turned and fought the storm across the deck to Faiza's side, its din so powerful, so living a force, he barely heard himself over the roaring of wind and wave—he grabbed her shoulder hard—
"Faiza—the stern—the stern is tearing—"
He felt her go cold and rigid under his hand—her eyes suddenly frantic.
"It can't—we're—we're not close enough!—" she leaned over the railing and shouted into the wet wind: "Hold on! Please, we promised! Hold on!" The dhow groaned deeply, the deck slanting toward the stern. Gabriel took Faiza by both shoulders and turned her round from the bow.
"Turn the ship back," he shouted. "I'll go my own way!"
"But you will drown—"
"Go!"
She watched him in the rain before she took the wound whip from her belt and pressed it in his hands.
"Take this! If you take nothing else, take this! Peace go with you, Gabriel!"
Without another look more, she dashed away from him in the rain to the ruining stern. Gabriel felt the dhow pitch and begin to slide back through the churning water—and slide fast—
He stripped himself of gauntlets, greaves, and breastplate. His armor, heavy metal, slid away along the deck with the downward sink of the stern as he climbed onto the railing, left with little more than trousers and Faiza's whip on his belt. Rain lashed his skin, the water beneath him twisting—
But already, it lightened, the wind quieted—the black eye of the storm, where the Acre lay, slipping away. Gabriel hesitated only a heartbeat over the waves—and dived.
— — —
During the course of his telling, Dracul and the Librarian had settled in the office, she in the chair at the desk and he pacing within the tight shelves. As he spoke, his eyes roamed over the manuscripts sealed behind glass—
—until he stopped, and his pause lengthened, and he looked into one shelf with such intensity, his eyes burned, his irises flashing dark and redly as Alucard's spell crackled.
The Dracul Archive abruptly grew cold and quiet.
"And what after?" the Librarian prompted him mildly.
Dracul ignored her, leaning on the glass.
"Why are these here?" he asked heavily. On the other side of the glass was a set of slim, leather-bound, and tiny books. Untitled and black, they boxed together, each indistinguishable from its sisters. They were unmarked but a label on their shelf identified them as the 'VARENHEID JOURNALS'.
The Librarian stood up from her chair. "What do you—"
"I asked you," Dracul growled as he reached back and smashed the glass casing open, glass and blood streaking the side of his fist as he grabbed the first of the little books and turned on the Librarian—towering, terrible, and in a rage. "Why are these here?" he started again, his voice distorted, the voice of the Dragon, fangs bared in every violent word. Blood ran from his fingers, the wounds healing and dropping shards of glass that had lodged in him. "Why do you have them?"
The Librarian drew back from him until she pressed against her own books, the glass rattling and ancient texts trembling behind her—but Dracul came ever closer, looming—close, too close—as she steadied herself against the shelf, left with no light in his immense shadow. The air smelt suddenly of fire and ash—and blood.
"I told you," the Librarian said carefully. "We needed to study you—"
"So you would study these! You—"
He put a hand to her throat and didn't even feel the warmth of her skin or the frantic throb of her pulse racing with his danger—
—before all went instantly dark.
The Dracul Librarian was gone; the Dracul Archive was gone; a desert of solitary darkness stretched in all directions. The bald bulb in the little office appeared to have retreated far up in a black sky, where it glowed like a distant moon. He had lost Alucard's glamour in coming to this place and looked down at his own stone-pale hands and black claws, his own red coat.
The ground shook beneath him, the nothingness seemed to tremble, as a great claw came down around Dracul, leaving him standing between the long hooks—of a red, horned dragon—the very beast that had guarded the Archive door made magnificent and ungodly huge.
"Is there a problem, sir?" the red dragon began amicably, curls of orange smoke about its teeth and whiskers—miles above Dracul. Dracul noted this duly and tucked the little book out of harm's way in his red coat.
"The Librarian and I were having a conversation," Dracul said.
"And we encourage our patrons to bring any and all questions to the staff's attention. Servitude is a founding tenant of this institute." The dragon raked its claws through the ground, tearing up the earth as Dracul leapt from him. "But the Dracul Archive is a place of learning, sir. If you continue to carry on so and intimidate the Librarian, you will pose a detriment to others' learning—and you will be removed from the premises."
Dracul caught the threat.
"You are bigger than me," he conceded to the Archive Guardian. Even fully changed, he would still be—small, "But the bigger they are."
The dragon grinned, toothy and reptilian.
"I am whatever is required to kill you, sir." And the moment it spoke, a storm of red smoke rushed through the blackness, tearing at Dracul's coat and spraying him with jet sand, as the dragon condensed, tightening into a tiny form, gray and red-eyed—
—and Simon Belmont—
—armed with not just any battle cross, no mere Gandolfi replica, but the genuine article—his weapon smelling even of Heaven's blessing and the Shadow Realm it had been shattered on—
"That is a trick," Dracul conceded again. "How did you come by that?"
The Archive Guardian smiled—with Simon's mouth, Simon's streak of arrogance—or perhaps entirely its own.
"What do they say in that oh-so-green film? 'Your mind makes it real'?"
"I don't know that," Dracul admitted starkly.
"Much more important people than you—do," the guardian told him haughtily and then, in annoyance: "In brief, when I said I was whatever is required to kill you, sir, your neural impulses told me and my systems what would."
Frankly, Dracul did not know what neural impulses were either. It sounded like soul made science—or a dragon made computer, apparently. Before he could reply, strong arms locked him from behind, wrenched his arms back, exposed his chest—his heart. He struggled against the stone grip, throwing his head back and slacking as he looked into the gray, red-eyed face of his own son, who spoke too with the voice of the Archive Guardian as Simon advanced, the Combat Cross at ready.
"This is your only warning, sir. I want you to understand fully—" As Alucard, the Archive Guardian tightened his hold, shocks of pain in Dracul's joints. "—what becomes of those who disturb this learning environment." Dracul twisted, jerking back to the front where Simon reared back, pulling the cross up and driving it down—
—and all was light again.
As light as the Dracul Archive offered.
The Librarian seemed to be gone still, and he was alone with the books. As he 'returned', Alucard's glamour melted away his vampiric traits again, but the little book was still in his coat. He shook off his disorientation and went to the shelf where he'd first found it: the glass casing appeared undisturbed, as if he had never shattered it, but the rest of the tiny books were gone. Dracul punched the case with the side of his fist, spreading a web of cracks that soon shuddered and reformed as he turned and trudged to the Archive gate.
It was open, and not too far away in the dark, the Dracul Librarian waited for him at the foot of the stairs back up to the National Library. Light glowed from the top of the stairs—the sealed door had opened.
Alucard would never forgive him if he killed her. That was Alucard's only rule, his only condition, for bringing him here in the first place: "Harm no one," his son had said and made him swear to it. His oath was all that stood between that woman and complete death.
Perhaps she even knew it, but it did not stop her from speaking.
"I have made a special accommodation to allow you to borrow that item," the Librarian said when he reached her. If anything had shaken her, the mask hid it. She ruled the Archive again—as she had ruled the car, the airport sidewalk—Dracul sneered. This arrogant human bitch who turned through the pages of those books—as if they were any other 'item' in her 'collection'—
"You are not allowing me anything," he snarled at her. "It's mine."
She faced him resiliently, fearless with the might of that red brute at her beck and whim.
"Please take care reading it. It is very old and delicate—"
"I will do what I want with it—it belongs to me—"
"Be especially careful, or the binding will crack," she told him anyway. "It is on loan to you for eight days—"
"For the last time, it's mine, woman!" Dracul roared and tore up the stairs, leaving the Librarian below.
— — —
Oh well, and we were having such a pleasant library visit too. Reading is so dangerous. I still don't know what to say about this chapter because it ends on not one but two cliffhangers. See you next week?
I might have cheated and made Gabriel leave the combat cross behind because him losing it in the sea would be, um, problematic.
The beta readers also tell me they are very concerned for Jabir's safety. There is a chance, Internet, that you are concerned too. Allow me to not put your fears at ease—at all. I don't know if he's okay, but I do know that I don't wanna write it and find out. Which is a completely irresponsible thing for a writer to say. I'm being reckless with your hearts and the life of a cute, fake little boy possessing a boat.
Anyhow, as always, thank you for reading, favorite reader! Have a lovely week! - SM
